Akutenshi no Uta
by bleeding on broadway
Summary: Title translates to Song of the Broken Angel. Thank youuu, Mika! A series of drabbles, centric on the Kankuro/Ino ship. QUATRE : Her laughter is raw, ragged, and overflowing with pain.
1. Smell

**Smell**

He thought about her often. He wasn't sure why, really. There were few similarities between the two of them. They were quite different people.

There was no reason for him to pay her any mind, really. She was a nameless, faceless, Konoha kunoichi; nothing he should be overly concerned about. It wasn't his job to keep tabs on those from the Hidden Leaf Village; he was hardly ever even on that side of the continent.

Which was why he couldn't understand why she had begun haunting his dreams. Why it was her brilliantly blue eyes that he always saw when he closed his own. He would see her throwing her blonde tresses over her shoulder, offering a subtle smirk, before disappearing and leaving him wanting.

The Suna shinobi was beginning to hate her.

He hated how she kept him up at night, waiting to find himself in her clutches again. He'd never even formally met her, could barely even grasp her name. All he could remember were those clear, inviting blue eyes, and how she'd smelled so strongly of roses and peonies, and flowers he didn't even know the names of.

He missed that smell.


	2. Feel

**Feel**

She waits until he is alone; until both his teammates have gone their respective ways, and he is left to himself. She doesn't even know why she is doing this; there is no real reason. She doesn't need to prove anything.

He knows of her presence almost immediately, she can tell by the subtle way he's begun walking with more care, how his foot hits the ground more delicately than it had when he'd been walking with Haruno Sakura and Uzumaki Naruto. Sai definitely knows that he is being pursued, and knows exactly who it is that is following him from the rooftops of Konoha. Nearly a block away from his apartment, he stops, waiting for her to make her move.

She lands gracefully in front of him from easily four stories up, that lazy seductive grin on her face as she gazes at him. He waits for her to speak first, and is surprised when she pins him against the wall of the empty shop to his right. The sixteen year old kunoichi wastes no time in tracing her lips along his jawline, in delicately brushing her tongue along his earlobe.

"Do you feel anything?" she murmurs breathlessly against his ear, her words hardly a whisper. Her mouth moves down to the hollow between his neck and shoulder, and one hand grips his crotch tightly, eliciting the quietest of astonished breaths from the pale boy's lips. "How about now?" she reiterates, her voice louder and more forceful, pale brows furrowed in a contained fury. Her tongue and lips continue to dance around Sai's face, gracing eyebrow, lash, nose; from the apples of his cheeks to the slight indention at his collarbone. There is no bulge against her hand, nothing to betray the shinobi's blank canvas of a face.

With a smothered scream, she pulls herself off of him and returns to the rooftops. She doesn't know why she wanted to make him feel something; especially since now, Yamanaka Ino finds herself _feeling_ less and less.


	3. Sight

**Sight**

It's a sad scene, really. The way she's splayed out on the cold street, her long blond hair pulled from its customary ponytail and fanning around her body like a light curtain. Eyes as brilliantly blue as the sky are closed delicately in her slumber, and he has to admit that she almost looks beautiful, even facedown in her own vomit. He wonders for a moment how long she's been here, alone, in the alley adjacent to the bar, and who didn't care enough about her to just leave her there.

It doesn't take much effort. She may be full of fire and fury when she's conscious, but while she's not, she's as light and dainty as a flower. It disturbs him, that something with this much power can hide in such a small, albeit striking package. There's no thought to pulling her into his arms, it's just something that needs to and will be done.

He doesn't know the city. But it's not that hard to find her apartment, to trail the scent of honeysuckle and other flowers he doesn't know the names of. When he goes to place her on the mattress, she instinctively wraps her arms around his neck, even unconscious not willing to be left behind again. As crude and brash as he is, Kankuro can still manage a soothing shush from his raspy throat, and she curls around her blankets and away from him. He washes her face with a scented cloth, taking care to remove all the evidence that she'd been lying in a pile of her own sick. And with that, he is gone, leaving through her window with only the shortest of glimpses back, so he can remember the sight of her so fragile and grasping at the blankets.

And as he leaves, she hears the slight thud of wooden joints bouncing against each other before drifting back into an oblivion of her own making.


	4. Sound

**Sound**

It's his favorite thing about her, really, her laughter. One would expect that with her obvious outward beauty that every laugh that would leave her full lips would be just as beautiful. But no, that's not the case, and that's exactly what he finds so alluring about her. Her laughter is raw, ragged, and overflowing with pain. She doesn't hide how her kunoichi life has affected it, or maybe it's something she hasn't noticed. Maybe she just pretends not to. Either way, the raw fragility of it entrances him. He can navigate the wounds that they seep from, the deep rooted anguish deep inside her. He can hear it; all in her laughter.

He imagines that, one day, it won't be as frayed. He imagines that someday it will be like the peal of bells.

**-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**

She tried to tell herself that it was a dream that night. Buries it deep, beneath the memories of fallen comrades, shinobi killed by her own hand, and tears of regret that don't quite extinguish the fire of fury. She forgets about it, doesn't think twice. But every now and again, it claws its way up from the grave.

It's whenever the breeze passes through the wooden wind chimes in front of the flower shop that she does remember. That is a feat in and of itself, considering the chimes have been removed to the farthest corner to prevent this particular memory from reeling its head.

But today has the wind rushing through the village; the shutters slamming violently against the windows and the screaming groans of trees as they are nearly tipped. And Ino cannot help but close her eyes and remember the sound of Karasu's wooden joints as Kankuro left that night.


End file.
